Jordan

January 2, 1985|By Thomas Ferraro and Andrea Herman, United Press International

JORDAN, MINN. — Johnny Voss, 11, frequently glances over his shoulder to see if he is being trailed.

``Sometimes, in stores, if a person is walking and I turn and he turns, I do all sorts of moves just to make sure he isn`t following me. I`ve gotten more cautious about that.``

Johnny is the sandy-haired, angelic-looking son of a Lutheran minister. He is not among the more than 40 children said to have been sexually abused. But he is scared.

Johnny shrugs and says softly, ``I think I`ll always be a little afraid of being home alone.``

He says his friends joke about what has happened. ``But I think, deep inside, they feel the same way I do. Like this one girl I know. She was very proud because she just got a letter on her jacket, a Jordan (school) jacket, and she went to Burnsville and people were pointing and making fun of her. And when she got home she ripped the Jordan letters off of it.``

Johnny is frustrated, too, at the way adults have viewed the case.

``If a person got killed and the person who saw it was 25 or 26, I think people would believe him. There`s a whole bunch of kids who say they were sexually abused, but people don`t believe them.``

Sociologist Gary Fine: ``It is a tricky thing to try to evaluate children`s testimony as compared to adults` testimony. The irony is that in general children are more honest than adults. The difficulty is that children are more likely to be confused or unsure what the truth is.

``Perfectly sincere testimony from a child can be attacked for its credibility. The child is susceptible to being led, manipulated and having his memory twisted. At the same time, we are likely to give the adult the benefit of the doubt.

``One would be very hard put to imagine that all the children in Jordan are lying. But it is possible that they were led by the prosecution and investigators or they were confused.

``As for Johnny, any child in such a situation would react with apprehension. Children, though, are quite flexible and resilient. They are able to get over many traumas, which at the time seem like the end of the world.`` Jordan is 35 miles southwest of Minneapolis, near the wooded banks of the Minnesota River. Named for the biblical river in Palestine, Jordan was founded in 1853 by a man named Thomas Holmes, who took 160 acres from the Indians to build a sawmill.

Today, Jordan`s downtown includes three streets and four churches. Its biggest employer is a wheelchair manufacturer with a work force of about 50.

During the past 20 years, Jordan has changed from a farm town to a middle- class commuter stop. Most residents work at glass, printing and auto plants in surrounding communities.

But still, Jordan remains the kind of town where one can get credit at the general store; where Myrtle Whipps, who owns Hamburger Home Cafe, greets customers by first name; and where insiders know that Dr. Paul Stahler takes his phone off the hook on Fridays, his day off.

Jordan`s tree-lined inner core is dominated by aging brick and wood-frame houses. On the outskirts are suburban ranch houses and the 290-unit Valley Green Mobile Home Park.

The park is Jordan`s ``other side of the tracks.`` It primarily draws transient, low-income residents, and it is where investigators made their first sexual abuse arrest on Oct. 1, 1983.

During the next eight months, 24 other people were arrested in Jordan and outlying areas. They included a deputy sheriff, a police officer, factory workers, a truck driver, a welder, waitresses and several people who were unemployed.

It was alleged that more than 40 children were forced to engage in sex acts with adults, including many of their own parents, as well as each other and, in some cases, with animals.

The one man originally arrested pleaded guilty, another couple was acquitted, and all other charges were suddenly dropped two months ago. Yet the investigation officially remains active and some parents are reluctant even to hug their children in public.

``Why can`t people concentrate on the good things of Jordan?`` said Thomas Carolan, a Catholic priest. ``We were state football champions last year.`` The Jordan Hubmen won the championship game 28-0.

``But after the game, what did the reporters ask -- `What about sex in Jordan?` ``

Robert Bentz, 37, and his wife Lois, 34, live in a split-level house on Cedar Valley Road, just south of town in Scott County. They were the 12th and 13th people arrested and the first to be tried.

In SexDptember, following three weeks of testimony from a parade of witnesses, a district court jury acquitted them of molesting their 7-year-old son and four other children.

``I don`t think we`ve even hit the tip of the iceberg,`` Robert Bentz said. ``Two or three years down the road, we don`t know what it`s going to be like.``

He has taken a second mortgage on his house to help pay $55,000 in legal fees. And he feels his entire family could face years of therapy.